Employees can get carried away on social media. US Airways learned this the hard way when its employee responded to a customer complaint on Twitter with an obscene picture of a woman and a toy jet. An apology and deletion of the tweet followed an hour later (an eternity in cyberspace). US Airways claims its employee made an “honest mistake,” and the incident has not spawned a lawsuit, but one can imagine situations in which the malicious online statements of an employee land the employer in legal trouble.

So what’s an employer to do? Thankfully, employers can find some solace in Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act (“CDA”), as a recent Indiana case illustrates. In Miller v. Federal Express Corp., an employee of a non-profit organization, 500 Festival, Inc. (“500 Festival”), and an employee of FedEx separately posted comments on media websites criticizing the plaintiff’s leadership of Junior Achievement of Central Indiana, which he ran from 1994 to 2008. Although the employees posted the comments using aliases, the plaintiff traced the comments back to IP addresses assigned to 500 Festival and FedEx and sued them for defamation.

The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of the defamation claims against 500 Festival and FedEx based on the Section 230 of the CDA. Congress passed Section 230 to protect companies that serve as intermediaries for online speech from liability for harmful content posted by third parties. A defendant claiming Section 230 immunity must show that: (1) it is a provider or user of an interactive computer service; (2) the plaintiff’s claim treats it as the publisher or speaker of information; and (3) another information at issue was provided by another content provider. Satisfying these three elements immunizes the defendant from suit, although the author of the offensive content could still be held liable.

It’s not difficult to see how Section 230 applies where, for instance, the operator of an online discussion forum is sued for defamation based on a comment posted by a forum member. The operator easily qualifies as an “interactive computer service” and can argue it is not liable for content that someone else published. But could a corporate employer qualify for Section 230 immunity? The court in Miller said yes, siding with precedent set by California and Illinois courts. An employer that provides or enables multiple users on a computer network with Internet access qualifies as a provider of an interactive computer service. Since the defamation claims tried to hold 500 Festival and FedEx liable for allegedly publishing statements made by their employees, Section 230 barred the claims.

Controlling what employees say online can be a daunting task, but it’s nice to know that employers have some protection from legal liability for the “honest” (or not so honest) mistakes of employees.

Google successfully obtained dismissal of a defamation lawsuit filed by a person (Mmubango) who found derogatory comments about him posted online. Mmubango discovered anonymous statements about himself on the “Wikiscams” website. Mmubango asked Google to remove the statements from its search engine and to give him information about the poster of the comments. Google refused.

Mmubango sued Google and others for defamation, and Google defended by moving to dismiss the claim based on Communications Decency Act (CDA) immunity. The federal district court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania agreed that Google met the requirements for CDA immunity. First, Google is an interactive computer service provider. Second, Google did not author the allegedly defamatory content, but instead, was provided with it by another information content provider (i.e., Wikiscams). The defamation claim alleged that Google was liable for storing and broadcasting the derogatory comments about Mmubango. Third, Mmubango was seeking to treat Google as the publisher of third-party statements. Deciding whether to provide access to third-party content or, alternatively, to delete the content is an act of publishing. Under section 230 of the CDA, Google could not be held liable for defamation based on its decision to publish a third party’s statements. The court dismissed Google from the case.

“You wanna make a federal case out of it?” Well, maybe you do, but as the federal district court of Hawaii recently explained, citing a federal statute and arguing that the Internet is involved won’t cut it.

The plaintiff (Sulla) was counsel to a party that foreclosed on property owned by the nonprofit corporation that one of the defendants (Horowitz) owned. Sulla alleged that Horowitz and his co-defendant began publishing defamatory statements about Sulla over the Internet, including through a website with a domain name bearing his name. Sulla sued Horowitz for defamation in state court, but the defendants removed the case to federal court, apparently based on diversity jurisdiction (i.e., all the plaintiffs are citizens of a different state than all the defendants). Noting that all the parties might be citizens of Hawaii, the federal court issued an order to show cause why the action should not be sent back to state court. Defendants’ briefing on the jurisdictional issue did not allay the court’s concerns.

The defendants argued that the court actually had federal question jurisdiction. The basis for their argument? Because the allegedly defamatory statements were published on the Internet, defendants argued, the court has exclusive federal jurisdiction over the case based on the Communications Decency Act (CDA). The court disagreed, giving a quick lesson on how the CDA and federal question jurisdiction work.

First, “Section 230 [of the CDA] does not shield persons from liability for defamatory statements that they make via the internet.” Second, whether CDA immunity applies is irrelevant to the analysis of federal jurisdiction. The court cited the basic rule that federal question jurisdiction cannot arise out of a defense (as compared to a claim) based in federal law. CDA immunity is a defense, so the possibility that the CDA might protect the defendants from liability for defamation did not convert the lawsuit into a “federal case.”

The court also found the defendants’ other arguments for federal jurisdiction unpersuasive and sent the case back to state court.

This is a pretty straightforward Section 230 case. Gatehouse Media Freeport Holdings, Inc. publishes The Journal-Standard. Like many modern newspapers, The Journal-Standard is available in print and online. The Journal-Standard published an article about Bill Hadley, a candidate for political office. An anonymous person using the name “Fuboy” posted an online comment to the article saying that “Hadley is a Sandusky waiting to be exposed. Check out the view he has of Empire from his front door.” Hadley sued Gatehouse Media for defamation.

Gatehouse Media got the lawsuit dismissed based on Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which provides that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1). As a website host that allows readers to post comments, Gatehouse Media was an “interactive computer service.” A user who posts comments on the newspaper’s website is “another information content provider.” That means Gatehouse Media is not considered the publisher or speaker of the allegedly defamatory comment directed at Hadley.

Hadley hypothesized that Gatehouse Media could have invented a fictitious person named “Fuboy” to post the comment anonymously. There being no evidence, the court disregarded the argument as “sheer speculation.”

LegalTXT Lesson: Section 230 is a powerful shield against defamation in the digital age, and a much needed one given the ease with which anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can post outlandish remarks under the cover of anonymity on a website hosted by a member of the mainstreammedia.